Death and Burial in the Anglo-Saxon
World
The Anglo-Saxon worldview was dominated by
a fatalistic view of life. Fate, wyrd, dictated who
would live and die, and, in a world full of blood
fueds and wars, death was more than just a fact
of life; it was a way of life. From elegies such as
"The Wanderer" and "The Seafarer" we know
that the Anglo-Saxons deeply mourned the
passing of friends and family. They wrote
tributes to loved ones, lamenting their losses, and
they designed the final resting places of the dead
in kind. Whether the gone were honored in
cremation or burial, it is in Anglo-Saxon
cemeteries that we can learn the most about their
culture. S. Chadwick Hawkes writes that:
… abandoned homes rarely yield more than
building foundations and the kinds of objects
people threw away. Their cemeteries on the other
hand, contain the things treasured by the AngloSaxons, their mortal remains and the precious
possessions which they sought to take with them
after death. (24)
Through the study
of Anglo-Saxon
cemeteries, we have
gained a significant
amount of
information about
what the AngloSaxons were like.
We have found
jewelry, tools,
weapons, and other
items that give an
insight into not only
the daily life of the
people, but also the afterlife that they expected.
While the initial excavations of Anglo-Saxon
cemeteries were not held to rigid scientific
standards, leading to the loss of much scientific
data, there have still been major breakthroughs
that, as is the way with these sorts of things, give
only as many answers as they conjure up new
questions.
Many Anglo-Saxon gravesites were disturbed
before scientists ever reached them. Robbers
throughout history have looted barrows for their
rich stores of treasure. In Anglo-Saxon times this
was common, and it is parallelled in the story of
the dragon's horde in Beowulf. The taboo against
disturbing the resting places of the dead is nearly
universal, and it was certainly a frightening and
potentially risky affair to rob graves. When
scientists
began
exploring
AngloSaxon
cemeteries,
in the
eighteenth
century, their motives were not so far removed
from the grave robbers of yore. The focus was on
collecting the grave goods from the different
burial sites, and, as Hawkes notes, "skeletons
were often disregarded and the historical value of
the cemetery as a whole was largely ignored"
(24). Because of the ruthlessness of this practice,
many scientists began focusing on scientific
archaeological excavation of settlements, but
those excavations revealed only deteriorated
foundations and the objects that people threw
away. Interest was again swayed back to the
cemeteries, but now with an eye turned less
toward gathering the treasures of the AngloSaxons, and more toward the anthropological
and archaeological information that could be
gathered by closely analyzing skeletons, burial
positions, grave proximities, and the like (24).
The Anglo-Saxons disposed of their dead either
through cremation, depositing the ashes of the
deceased in highly ornate urns, or inhumation,
usually in the form of barrows. Because of the
inherent difficulty in aging, sexing, or
identifying cremations, most of the studies focus
on the inhumed remains of individuals.
Barrows are an
ancient form of
burial in the
British Isles.
The practice
dates back
thousands of
years to the times of the most ancient human
inhabitation of the land. The Anglo-Saxons built
barrows to honor their dead nobles. The size of a
barrow is proportional to the importance of the
individual buried there. It is difficult to discover
the exact social status of inhumed bodies, but the
idea that barrows were reserved for the elite of
the Anglo-Saxon society is supported by two
facts: Not everybody was given a barrow burial,
and in barrows there are usually several
individuals interred. Anglo-Saxon literature
supports this assumption. Beowulf wants to have
a giant barrow built in his honor, and he makes
this wish as he lays on his death bed. Oftentimes
there is an initial interment in a barrow. There is
a main grave, and around this grave there may be
several bodies that were buried at around the
same time. It can be speculated that these
additional skeletons may be those of wives or
servants of the noble for whom the barrow was
built, but this cannot be verified for certain.
Scientists have also found that in large barrows
are secondary burials of cremation urns. They
presume that the urns belong to family members
of the deceased and that in this way the barrows
may have served as plots for less illustrious
family members (Grinsell, 92-3). Depending on
the social status of the deceased, barrows range
from small bumps to large, complex discs. The
most impressive barrows are huge man-made
hills, surrounded by a ditch and possibly a rock
wall. Less important individuals may have only a
small bump on the ground, almost
indistinguishable after a millennium.
A typical Anglo-Saxon cemetery of interest is
Finglesham, in East Kent. The site was used
from ca. 500 to ca. 700, and was almost certainly
founded by the aristocracy. Finglesham is
derived from the Old English, Pengels-ham,
which translates to Prince's Home or Prince's
Manor. The large barrow of the cemetery has
been numbered 204, and from the sheer size of
the mound it is obvious that he was quite
wealthy. The site was discovered in 1928 by
workers who were chalk quarrying. Thirty-one
graves were found between 1928 and 1929, and
another 215 graves were excavated "more
scientifically" between 1959 and 1967 (Hawkes,
24). The founding male, located in grave 204, is
supposed to have died at the age of 25 around the
year 525. He is interred in a large, iron-bound
coffin, and among other treasures found in his
grave is a green, glass claw goblet. He was found
with both domestic and imported weapons,
shields, jewelry, and tools, exhibiting the
cosmopolitan nature of Anglo-Saxon society.
Surrounding his burial site are the graves of what
are assumed to be family members and consorts.
Each of these skeletons was found surrounded by
items of similar extravagance to the founding
male. It is assumed that over half of the
population that was buried in Finglesham died
by age 25, but the assumption is complicated by
the difficulties in ageing or sexing skeletons.
According to Jeremy Huggett, from the
University of Glasgow, it is difficult to sex a
skeleton that is under 25, and it is difficult to age
a skeleton that is over 25. Until recently, sex was
determined by the gender relationships scientists
drew according to grave goods found with the
skeleton. This has been shown faulty since
sometimes men were buried with brooches, a
useful item to an Anglo-Saxon without zippers,
but one which many scientists attribute to
females. Skeletal evidence has also shown that
females were occasionally buried with weapons,
although the reasoning behind the coupling of a
female skeleton with a 'male' weapon perplexes
researchers (Huggett).
If Finglesham is an example of a typical AngloSaxon cemetery, Sutton Hoo is an example of
the exceptional capability the Anglo-Saxons had
in creating monuments. The site is dominated by
a huge ship burial, one of the few of its kind
found in the British Isles. The site is the tomb of
a seventh-century king, discovered in 1939.
Excavation of the site lasted until the late 1960s,
and still all of the questions researchers have
about the cemetery have not been answered.
James Campbell describes the unique royal
grave:
A ship had been dragged from the river Deben
up to the top of a 100-foot-high bluff, and laid in
a trench. A gabled hut had been built amidships
to accommodate a very big coffin and an
astonishing collection of treasures and gear. The
trench had then been filled in and a mound raised
over it to stand boldly on the skyline. (32)
Campbell goes on to note that the site had not
been disturbed until its discovery by modern
scientists. Treasures included personal ornaments
inlaid with gold and garnets, weapons, the
famous "Sutton-Hoo helmet," silverware, kitchen
and cooking equipment, coins, and a "ceremonial
whetstone" (32). The items originated from
various locations, as far away as the outskirts of
Europe, Alexandria, and Byzantium. The variety
of treasures and their cosmopolitan nature show
the extent to which the Anglo-Saxons interacted
with mainland cultures.
The question remains,
however, of just who is
buried at Sutton Hoo.
Some scientists want to
say that it is the grave of
Redwald, a powerful
Anglo-Saxon king who
died in the 620s. There
are 37 coins of
Merovingian origin, the
latest dating from the
620s, that suggest the
time frame is right for
the assertion of the site as Redwald's grave.
Scholars also point to two silver spoons that
were found in the treasure. One is engraved with
PAULOS, and the other SAULOS. Some
scientists say these were given to Redwald upon
his baptism into Christianity, and that the
mixture of pagan and Christian elements in the
burial site supports this. Indeed, the ship burial is
generally associated with pagan cultures. But
others claim that the burial of a ship points to the
influence of the Swedes on the Anglo-Saxons,
and go so far as to say that it is a Swedish
individual who rose to power in the British Isles.
Still others point to the origin of the coins and
say that it must have been an individual with
close ties to Gaul, possibly a king from that area.
Regardless, it is a truly fascinating treasure that
rewards speculation with only more
unanswerable questions (Cambell, 33).
In only the last hundred years of scientific
examination of Anglo-Saxon burial sites,
scientists have discovered a wealth of knowledge
equaled only by the wealth of treasure they have
also gleaned from various barrows and graves.
While these discoveries have mainly led to new
questions that defy answer, the evidence that
researchers have gathered have given a certain
amount of perspective to other cultural artifacts
from the Anglo-Saxon period. Scholars are using
the empirical evidence of archaeologists and
anthropologists to give new meaning to ancient
texts. Through the study of Anglo-Saxon grave
sites we become close to the objects the people
held dear, and through the combination of their
various forms of creative output, be it in
manufacturing items or texts, we become closer
to their civilization.
Sutton Hoo
Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying | 2002 | CARVER,
MARTIN | Copyright
The Sutton
Hoo burial
ground in
East Anglia,
England,
provides
vivid
evidence for
attitudes to death immediately before the conversion
of an English community to Christianity in the
seventh century C.E. Founded about 600 C.E., and
lasting a hundred years, Sutton Hoo contained only
about twenty burials, most of them rich and unusual,
spread over four hectares. This contrasts with the
"folk cemeteries" of the pagan period (fifth–sixth
centuries C.E.), which typically feature large
numbers of cremations contained in pots and
inhumations laid in graves with standard sets of
weapons and jewelry. Accordingly, Sutton Hoo is
designated as a "princely" burial ground, a special
cemetery reserved for the elite. The site was
rediscovered in 1938, and has been the subject of
major campaigns of excavation and research in 1965–
1971 and 1983–2001. Because the majority of the
burials had been plundered in the sixteenth century,
detailed interpretation is difficult.
The Sutton Hoo burial ground consists of thirteen
visible mounds on the left bank of the River Deben
opposite Woodbridge in Suffolk, England. Four
mounds
were
investigated
by the
landowner
in 1938–
1939; all are
from the
seventh
century
C.E., and
one mound contains the richest grave ever discovered
on British soil. Here, a ship ninety feet long had been
buried in a trench with a wooden chamber amid other
ships containing over 200 objects of gold, silver,
bronze, and iron. The conditions of the soil mean that
the body, timbers of ship and chamber, and most
organic materials had rotted to invisibility, but the
latest studies suggest that a man had been placed on a
floor or in a coffin. At his head were a helmet, a
shield, spears and items of regalia, a standard, and a
scepter; at his feet were a pile of clothing and a great
silver dish with three tubs or cauldrons. Gold buckles
and shoulder clasps inlaid with garnet had connected
a baldrick
originally made
of leather.
Nearly every
item was
ornamented
with lively
abstract images
similar to
dragons or birds of prey. The buried man was thought
to be Raedwald, an early king of East Anglia who
had briefly converted to Christianity, reverted to
paganism, and died around 624 or 625.
Investigations at Sutton Hoo were renewed in 1965
and 1983, and revealed considerably more about the
burial ground and its context. In the seventh century,
burial was confined to people of high rank, mainly
men. In mounds five to seven, probably among the
earliest, men were cremated with animals (i.e., cattle,
horse, and deer) and the ashes were placed in a
bronze bowl. In mound seventeen a young man was
buried in a coffin, accompanied by his sword, shield,
and, in an adjacent pit, his horse. In mound fourteen,
a woman was buried in an underground chamber,
perhaps on a bed accompanied by fine silver
ornaments. A child was buried in a coffin along with
a miniature spear (burial twelve). Mound two, like
mound one, proved to have been a ship burial, but
here the ship had been placed over an underground
chamber in which a man had been buried.
Because the graves were plundered in the sixteenth
century, interpretation is difficult. The latest Sutton
Hoo researcher, Martin Carver, sees the burial ground
as a whole as a pagan monument in which burial rites
relatively new to England (under-mound cremation,
horse burial, ship burial) are drawn from a common
pagan heritage and enacted in defiance of pressure
from Christian Europe. The major burials are
"political statements" in which the person honored is
equipped as an ambassador of the people, both at the
public funeral and in the afterlife.
A second phase of burial
at Sutton Hoo consisted
of two groups of people
(mainly men) who had
been executed by hanging
or decapitation. The
remains of seventeen
bodies were found around
mound five, and twentythree were found around a
group of post-sockets
(supposed to be gallows)
at the eastern side of the
burial mounds. These
bodies were dated (by radiocarbon determinations)
between the eighth and the tenth centuries, and reflect
the authority of the Christian kings who supplanted
those buried under the Sutton Hoo mounds in about
700 C.E.